President Barack Obama not only scored the most retweeted tweet of the year but also of all time with an image of him and first lady Michelle embracing along with the words "four more years".

The post was retweeted 810,000 times and received 300,000 favourites.

Justin Bieber took out second place for his goodbye tweet to his six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh who died from a rare form of brain cancer in September.

Bieber's tribute which read "RIP Avalanna. i love you" [sic], was retweeted 220,000 times and received 100,000 favourites.

As for trends, the 2012 Summer Olympics took out top place for the topic which generated the biggest conversation of the year.

The 16-day global competition generated 150 million tweets, and more than 116,000 of them were posted per minute during the closing ceremony.

Usain Bolt - who won gold in the 200m sprint - generated the most competition related conversation with 80,000 tweets per minute.

The US election came in second to the Olympics producing more than 41 million tweets, 31 million of which were sent out on election day.

The other 10 were about the first US presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

The MTV Awards came in third with 14.7 million tweets - 98,307 dedicated to One Direction.

Hurricane Sandy came in seventh place with 20 million tweets, behind the US Superbowl game between the Patriots and The Giants and the Euro 2012 football final between Spain and Italy (Spain won).

Some other memorable moments on Twitter remembered the tragic death of Whitney Houston with almost 10 million tweets going out commemorating her loss, and the online protests against controversial anti-piracy bills, SOPA and PIPA, which were later thrown out by the US Congress and Senate with more than 3.5 million tweets protesting the dramatic measures which would have severely limited internet freedoms.

Twitter also collated a list of high-profile people who joined in the social media service in 2012 such as The Office's Steve Carrell, Golden Girls veteran Betty White, musician Neil Young, and Pope Benedict XVI.

The social network also allows users to generate infographs based on their year on Twitter.